Younghead

Author: Mimas

As two of you have guessed somehow I am 19 years old and therefore most of the movies on this website are older than me.

Today I was walking past 3 older men sitting on the steps outside a house and I heard one of them mention Cannibal Holocaust. I couldn’t help but jump in because I literally watched it like two days ago. As it turns out they were talking about banned movies and stuff and we chatted about that for a bit.

They were saying how back then there was no CGI so to see realistic gore like that, it wasn’t a common sight. It’s something I never considered. I only realised they killed an actual turtle halfway through, around when they cut its shell open and started rifling through its guts. I was like “wow okay that looks a bit too shiny, wet and there’s weird gossamer-like stuff” and then I just googled it to check if it was a real one, which they also couldn’t do back then.

It was a short conversation but an interesting one. I never get to talk about stuff like that in real life, especially not spontaneously with strangers who were around when it was released and therefore experienced it during the controversy it stirred. Cannibal Holocaust is 46 years old and those gentlemen mistakenly thought it was even older (released during the 70s, I even said “I think it was released in 1980” because I know it was because I literally watched it on here where it says 1980 and they were like “maybe 78 79”). I know factually that the era in which a piece of media is released deeply influences it and the audience but it’s another thing to hear about the effects of that firsthand.

CULTURAL CONTEXT: In the UK, Cannibal Holocaust was a key example in the “video nasty” debate in the 80s, even the distributors of the film ended up complaining about it. This debate led to the regulation of this films and limited availability to children who were able to access them thanks to a loophole. The only reason I even know about this is because it was taught about briefly in my Criminology AS class. Most of this paragraph has been quickly paraphrased from wikipedia because I forgot everything about it.

I’ve gone a little off topic but yeah, point is that since I wasn’t around to actually experience those movies when they were released I’m missing out on how they were intended to be interpreted, party due to the fact that society has changed (a little bit because of them). Historical context adds a lot. I miss out. Temporal validity or something.